said by deepblackmag :

...Government wants to keep power, government runs the schools (some of the worst among civilized countries) So to keep power it keeps the schools poor and people too stupid to see the long term effects of these bills...

said by Rook008 :

So how does the U.S. government keep people stupid? The way I see it, people choose to be stupid. The information is there, you just have to do a little of the work yourself to get at it. You can't stop the curious.

said by jimbo2150 :

It seems like were going back in time, when major companies joined to become super-corporations. They were broken up long ago, will we see this again? Probably not untill 2010 at least (taking into acount the time between now and getting a new, better adminstration, replacing all these greedy SoBs in FCC and other areas, and the time the courts take).

said by LiamJunket :

That's a load of bush-wah! How many mega-bankruptcies does it take to convince people that mega-corporations do not represent the best defence of America's pre-eminence in technology, productivity, innovation and humanism? The evidence that small, nimble, innovative competitors are kicking the ass of behemoth corporations is abundant. The anti-competitive, anti-innovative nature of mega-corporations is their Achilles heel; they cannot respond swiftly and effectively to rapid changes in market condition. Their solution is to buy out the successful upstart competitors to reestablish market dominance. This strategy cannot endure due to factional and fractionalized derailment of corporate purpose, along with resultant increase in mass and inertia affecting the steerage of the corporate ship.

Furthermore, this proposed legislation, just like the DMCA it modifies and broadens, shall be the warden of an era of intellectual vacuousness akin to the so-called "Dark Ages". To say nothing of the deleterious effects of the criminalization of cultural behaviors and mechanisms which tend to preserve and expand the cohesiveness of society. This legislation removes or criminalizes the means to assimilate and reuse the intellectual and practical knowledge of prior and contemporaneous generations to foment intellectual innovation and contribute to the expansion of humanist evolution as well as the enrichment and betterment of society.

The logical end of this presumption, i.e., the DMCA, is the corporate patenting and licensing of all non-involuntary functions of the human being right down to the neural interactions giving rise to ideation, such rights being reserved to the corporate entities making up the board of governance of our future global state. I do not wish to be stripped of all that defines me as a human, only to have the bits and pieces, along with the requirements for life itself leased back to me on a per use basis. I don't want to live in a timorous world where thought itself is perforce temerarious, subject to intense surveillance and possible forfeiture of assets and/or personal freedom. A world where to merely share a thought without license is both criminal and subversive.

Movable metal type printing presses spurred the dissemination of knowledge and freed the masses from the tyranny of cloistered, controlled access to the accumulated culture of mankind giving rise to the flowering of human knowledge and our modern technological societies. The current "powers that be" are on the brink of stuffing that genie back into the bottle only five hundred and fifty years after its release. The effect of this extensive broadening of the DMCA cements in place the final piece of the fascist construct of control over the governed by limiting and/or criminalizing the right to accumulation, possession, assimilation, and dissemination of our collective thought and culture by institutionalizing threat, intimidation, involuntary surrender of privacy, asset forfeiture, and inevitable loss of both intellectual and physical freedom.

The only solution is regime change, as Bush and his minions prefer to call it, and the repeal of every vestige of their, and their masters, legislative initiatives and unconstitutional encroachments upon our civil liberties.

Impeach Bush now, remove his political appointees and their criminal legislative collaborators of all persuasions, and promote the restoration our constitutional government to one of the people, by people, for the people, free of corporate domination.

said by ross :

That's a load of bush-wah! How many mega-bankruptcies does it take to convince people that mega-corporations do not represent the best defence of America's pre-eminence in technology, productivity, innovation and humanism? The evidence that small, nimble, innovative competitors are kicking the ass of behemoth corporations is abundant. The anti-competitive, anti-innovative nature of mega-corporations is their Achilles heel; they cannot respond swiftly and effectively to rapid changes in market condition. Their solution is to buy out the successful upstart competitors to reestablish market dominance. This strategy cannot endure due to factional and fractionalized derailment of corporate purpose, along with resultant increase in mass and inertia affecting the steerage of the corporate ship.

Furthermore, this proposed legislation, just like the DMCA it modifies and broadens, shall be the warden of an era of intellectual vacuousness akin to the so-called "Dark Ages". To say nothing of the deleterious effects of the criminalization of cultural behaviors and mechanisms which tend to preserve and expand the cohesiveness of society. This legislation removes or criminalizes the means to assimilate and reuse the intellectual and practical knowledge of prior and contemporaneous generations to foment intellectual innovation and contribute to the expansion of humanist evolution as well as the enrichment and betterment of society.

The logical end of this presumption, i.e., the DMCA, is the corporate patenting and licensing of all non-involuntary functions of the human being right down to the neural interactions giving rise to ideation, such rights being reserved to the corporate entities making up the board of governance of our future global state. I do not wish to be stripped of all that defines me as a human, only to have the bits and pieces, along with the requirements for life itself leased back to me on a per use basis. I don't want to live in a timorous world where thought itself is perforce temerarious, subject to intense surveillance and possible forfeiture of assets and/or personal freedom. A world where to merely share a thought without license is both criminal and subversive.

Movable metal type printing presses spurred the dissemination of knowledge and freed the masses from the tyranny of cloistered, controlled access to the accumulated culture of mankind giving rise to the flowering of human knowledge and our modern technological societies. The current "powers that be" are on the brink of stuffing that genie back into the bottle only five hundred and fifty years after its release. The effect of this extensive broadening of the DMCA cements in place the final piece of the fascist construct of control over the governed by limiting and/or criminalizing the right to accumulation, possession, assimilation, and dissemination of our collective thought and culture by institutionalizing threat, intimidation, involuntary surrender of privacy, asset forfeiture, and inevitable loss of both intellectual and physical freedom.

The only solution is regime change, as Bush and his minions prefer to call it, and the repeal of every vestige of their, and their masters, legislative initiatives and unconstitutional encroachments upon our civil liberties.

Impeach Bush now, remove his political appointees and their criminal legislative collaborators of all persuasions, and promote the restoration our constitutional government to one of the people, by people, for the people, free of corporate domination.

said by Necronomikro :

That's fine, but, if we do impeach bush, remove all of the members of congress and the judges, make sure you don't just go ahead and put democrats there instead - they're just as corrupt, as a whole. Make them independant, and BAN POLITICAL PARTIES! POLITICAL PARTIES == POLITICAL MACHINES == SHOULD BE ILLEGAL!

said by pb5k :

I pledge allegiance...

said by pb5k :

So I either agree with you or I'm a commie? There's a false dichotomy for you.

Oh, and the 1950s called, they want their red scare back.

said by Jigsaw :

Its funny how corporate shill boy hates commies yet its fine to deal with em for cheap Labor and goods.

said by MxxCon :

DMCA was used to sue printer cartridge re-fill companies

said by aaronfitz :

Yeah, in a case which Lexmark subsequently lost.

said by Davebo :

The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

Insanity...

Smith's measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.

During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is "encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft," Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities."

said by Jason Levine :

We all know that al Queda's next nefarious plan involves flooding the P2P networks with the latest Jessica Simpson song. The fiends!

said by G_Poobah :

Just like the prohibition, the law had the effect of making everyone a criminal, and once you think of yourself as a criminal, then why should you care about ANY law?

said by mrchris :

What's stopping people from voting Independant or Green?

said by MeKuN :

The American people have no confidence in either party anymore. Look at how close the last two runs for presidency went. Both close as hell. Both parties say what we want to hear and they do what the big money tells them. Some how it has to change. My vote doesnt mount to much these days.